eduify | write faster

Although many students don’t like the idea of doing extra work before they actually start their homework, writing an impressive essay actually requires putting in a little extra effort prior to putting  together a final draft. Prewriting techniques involve warming up your – the student’s – brain, organizing ideas, and setting up a plan before diving straight into writing a composition. It may take just a little extra time, but you will find that if you practice some prewriting  before every essay you write, your papers will be better written overall, which will in effect give a better overall grade. Ten or fifteen minutes of extra work may be the difference between a B and an A grade for your paper. And, with all of the different techniques you can use to prewrite, there really is no excuse not to use at least one of them.

Brainstorming

Writing down every idea that is related to your topic in a list form is one of the simplest forms of prewriting, which is called brainstorming. The great thing about brainstorming is that you can put anything in the list that pops into your head. If your topic is on birds and you have random thoughts like,

-They fly

-They’re pretty

-They squawk

-They poop on people’s heads

All of those things would be fine because your brainstorming ideas are related to your topic on birds.

Mapping, Clustering, Bubbling, Webbing

It has several different names, but whatever you want to call it, it is one of the quickest ways to organize ideas in a fun manner. Circling ideas and linking the related ones that surround your main idea is a messy way to be organized… which ends up feeling a lot more enjoyable than most homework does. And, since your related ideas are clustered together, your separate body paragraphs are already prepared for you. What’s better than a prewriting technique that’s fun and easy?

Free Writing

There is nothing more freeing than knowing you can write whatever you want without worrying about grammar, spelling, structure, or coherence. That is the joy of free writing – you are free to make mistakes and write whatever you want. The trick is to force yourself to continually keep your pen on the paper and write whatever thought comes to mind, while trying to think of your essay’s subject. You may go off topic at times, but that is okay. You do not want to stop or correct your free writing because you may lose a train of thought that could be useful to you later. Just force yourself to keep writing, and you will eventually have enough material to use in your composition. By reading over your free writing afterwards, you should highlight or underline any ideas you find useful to your essay.

Outlining

Although outlining is more structured than other forms of prewriting, it is a very useful format to use in order to have your essay organized prior to writing your essay, which was explained in a previous “how-to” (see “Writing Outlines”). Outlines also help your essay stay on topic. By outlining your body paragraphs with their specific points, it is easy to just refer to your ideas written in your outline before you begin writing your composition.

Asking Questions

Sometimes the only way students will work is if they feel they are being forced to. Asking yourself questions is a way to make yourself feel forced into coming up with ideas for your essay. The standard reporter’s questions – Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? – are great ways to begin asking yourself questions about your topic. If you are still writing a composition about birds, ask yourself, “Who likes birds?” or “What kinds of birds are there?” or “Where do birds live?” Obviously, you can bend these questions to your own needs; these are just ways to force yourself into coming up with answers that will inevitably lead to ideas for your essay.

By Amelia Anderson

There is no avoiding the anxiety that comes with the start of a new school year. Students cannot help worrying whether they will like their teachers or whether they can handle the new homework. It is the unknown that can be so frightening, and being unprepared only heightens that feeling. However, if you have an idea of what to expect from your classes and can get yourself ready for them, you will not feel so overwhelmed and nervous at the beginning of class. Here are some ways to prepare yourself for your new classes even before they begin.

Buy Your Books Ahead of Time

Most teachers make the book lists for their classes available to the students in advance. It is a good idea to buy all the books you can before classes start, so you can be prepared for class. So many students make the mistake of buying their books the day after classes start, but this often leads to problems. Long lines at the bookstores are a nuisance and books are easily sold out. Having a delay in getting your books can make you fall behind with your homework early in the semester, and turning in homework late is a bad way to start your classes.

Read Some of Your Homework Before Class Starts

Reading the introduction or skimming some of the homework in your new textbook is a good way to see what is coming in the next few months. Instead of wondering whether your homework is going to be difficult, take a look and see what your book has to offer, so you can mentally prepare yourself for upcoming homework. Don’t get so ambitious that you actually do the homework, but familiarize yourself a little bit with what you will be studying. Getting too far ahead probably isn’t a good idea since you may see some material that is confusing, which could just make you that much more nervous in the first place. The idea is to make yourself aware of what you can expect, so there are no real surprises when you start your classes.

Practice Skills You May Have Forgotten

Subjects that require practice like math and grammar rules may be difficult to remember when you come back from a long break. If you feel you are getting a little rusty with your algebraic formulas, or are having trouble remembering punctuation rules, it may help to do some light studying before the new classes begin.  Skim through an old grammar book, or find some math sheets online that you can practice a little bit with. Getting some practice will not only jog your memory, but it will help you feel prepared for the upcoming school year.

Skim Through Last Year’s Grades

Take a quick look at the kind of work you turned in last year. What kinds of grades did you get? Were you happy with them? What did you do well? What did you do badly? Keep these past grades in mind as reminders of what good habits you should keep up with the New Year, and what bad habits you should be fixing this coming year. If you slacked off or turned in-work that was incomplete, these old assignments should be a wake up to make better practices for the upcoming school year.

Have Your Backpack Ready

It may seem minor, but having your backpack organized and set with your binder, books, pens, and pencils will make you feel prepared for the first day of school. Throwing all of your things in your bag at the last minute can make a student feel anxious and unprepared. If you are rushed into putting things together, you are likely to forget something important, or leave yourself with the fear of forgetting something. In short, if your backpack is prepared early, you will feel less anxious and more prepared for class.

Using bad grammar in class, at work, in your writing, and in your general life, is the quickest way to make people think you’re stupid. Luckily, grammar can be learned with practice and dedication, even to those for whom it does not come naturally. By recognizing common grammar mistakes, you can make a greater effort to avoid them and to begin writer clearer, more precisely, and more intelligently. Students, here are 5 common grammar mistakes to avoid:

5. Dangling participle.

“After rotting in the cellar for weeks, my brother brought up some oranges.” -Tom Sant, Persuasive Business Proposals

Unless you are interested in rotting brothers, this sentence will make no sense to you. First of all, decomposing people have no business bringing anyone oranges and, secondly, dangling participles are some of the most egregious errors you can make while writing. The dangling participle, also called a dangling modifier, “attaches itself to a word different from the one the writer apparently meant. It may be intended to modify the subject f a sentence, but due to word order seems to modify an object instead.” In plain English, a dangling participle doesn’t modify what it should. If you write, “After having paid for my groceries, the cashier bagged them for me,” what you are actually saying is that the grocery cashier paid for your groceries, because the participle (the clause at the beginning of the sentence) is grammatically modifying “cashier” rather than the intended subject.

4. Double negatives.

Many languages allow for double negatives, but English is one that does not. While to say that you “don’t know nothing” would mean, at literal face value, that you do know something, using it actually reveals that there is, in fact, nothing you know – about grammar, that is! Rather than using a double negative, what you need to use in a negation sentence is a negative adverb or a noun of negation. Negative adverb: I do not know anything. Noun of negation: I know nothing.

3. i.e. versus e.g.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine, because it seems that even successful journalists and other career writers get confused between i.e. and e.g.! E.g. means Exempli gratia, or “example given”. I.e., on the other hand, means id est, or “that is”. Sometimes, however, i.e. and e.g. are actually interchangeable, but only if you are using them in the context of a finite versus non-finite list. So if I were to say, “I love medical shows on television, i.e. House MD, Grey’s Anatomy, and Scrubs,” what I mean is that these are the only medical television shows I love. If I were to say “I love medical shows on television, e.g. House MD, Grey’s Anatomy, and Scrubs,” what I mean is that I truly love medical TV shows and that these are an example of some I like (but by no means a finite list).

2. Split infinitives.

The split infinitive, while technically incorrect in grammar, is always used. “To boldly go where no man has gone before,” the famous opener from Star Trek, is just one example. But in proper grammar usage, the adverb (boldly) ought to go after the verb (go). Proper English would have Star Trek announce “To go boldly where no man has gone before”. Many people see nothing wrong with using the split infinitive, but I had an English teacher in high school whose very reason to get out of bed in the morning was to wage war against it, so I would use at your own peril. Especially in English class.

1. Mistaken apostrophes.

Mistaken apostrophes annoy grammarians more than anything. Though this is something we all should have learned in grade school, it really hasn’t sunk in with everyone. The general rule follows: use the apostrophe and s in singular noun constructions to make the meaning possessive (”Sally’s dog is cute.”). For plural possessives, use the apostrophe after the letter s, unless two s sounds are pronounced (”The twins’ dog is cute, but Carlos’ dog is cuter”). With biblical names, out of tradition, we always use the apostrphe s rule (”Jesus’s birthday is on Christmas”).

In your day-to-day vernacular, you probably use a lot of non-dictionary words. I, for one, have a habit of abbreviating things to the nth degree when I speak, to the point where “whatever” becomes “whatev,” “totally” becomes “totes”, “vacation” becomes “vacay”, “details” becomes “detes” and… you get the point. Sadly, I also use some words that are blatantly fabricated, like “criticality” when I mean “criticism”. Worse of all, I have an annoying habit of using the word “funner” when I ought to simply say, “more fun”.

However, as peppered as my speech patterns are with non-standard English, I try not to bring my own personal language into the sphere of academic writing. I couldn’t imagine what would go through an English teacher’s mind if I turned in a paper that said, “Yo, Herman Melville’s gynormous book about Moby Dick was super phat, cuz Ishmael will be one of my fave, most coolest protagonist forevs LOL.” Like, automatic F, right?

To help you write better, I compiled a list of 5 words you should avoid in all your papers. I understand the importance if irony, but the irony of using grammar and spelling like “Dey’s awluz at it, sah, en dey do mos’ kill me, dey skyers me so,” even in a paper about The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn (which that quote is directly lifted from) would completely be lost on your professor. So, without further ado:

1. Irregardless. This word is completely unacceptable in any universe where proper grammar is encouraged. According to Wikipedia, “Irregardless is a term meaning in spite of or anyway, that has caused controversy since it first appeared in the early twentieth century. It is generally listed in dictionaries as “incorrect” or “nonstandard”. This word is used to mean “regardless,” but with the inclusion of the “ir-” preceding the word, it is formed into a double negative. Logically, “irregardless” would mean “not regardless,” but of course, that’s not the way it’s ever used. Long story short: avoid.

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